History ComicBook / Transmetropolitan

* TransHuman: Pretty much everyone, but the Farsight Enclave takes it to extremes.
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: The chapter "Business", dealing with child prositutes.

** A Hitler devotee shows up during Bob Heller's rally.

A [[{{Characters}}/{{Transmetropolitan}} Characters Page]] is currently under construction.

A [[{{Characters}}/Transmetropolitan Characters Page]] is currently under construction.

* DestinationDefenestration: "I'll have my assistant defenestrate you. [[DidNotDoTheResearch And you wouldn't want anything happening to your fenestrates, would you?]]"

* ActionGirl: Channon, once she returns to Spider's side.

* ContinuitySnarl: [[spoiler: a big fat one. Spider gives a camera to a woman, Mary, after Vita's death; this later comes into play at the end of the series with her taking a photo needed to expose and bring down the Smiler for his role in Vita's death. Unfortunately the event in question happens BEFORE Mary got her camera.]]

* DoomTroops: The riot police have strong shades of this, what with having Submit Now emblazoned on their shields and taking PoliceBrutality to a whole new level.

** The Smiler is somewhat based on TonyBlair, with elements of RichardNixon... and TheJoker. And, jarringly, physically resembles Bobby Kennedy.

* ImAHumanitarian: Cloned human meat is ubiquitous[[hottip:*:presumably along with other cloned meats given that Spider once eats a ''bucket'' of caribou eyes]]. Beyond that, cannibalistic murders come up more than once: [[CannibalClan a family of crazed cannibals]] that eats election canvassers, and Spider makes an off-handed comment about once getting hit with an [[HorrorHunger auto-cannibalism meme]] that left him unable to eat pork to this day. Also, the Beast [[EatsBabies eats Chilean Baby Extract]].

** Spider actually goes beyond the call of duty with this trope, at one point collecting dogs in a sack to tie them to festive Christmas bells as "living mufflers". He also enthusiastically partakes in the cull, which doesn't only involve literal dogkicking but also dog mauling, dog evisceration, dog impaling and dog burning. On top of that, the dogs in question are ''intelligent'' and the whole cull was sanctioned by law under the pretext of birth control. It verges on [[BloodSport blood sport]] to such a degree that it has to be pathological. Spider is not a dog person.

* LimitedWardrobe: Except on special occasions[[hottip:*:like the time he crashed a religious gathering dressed in a white robe, false beard, and halo-onna-stick]] Spider always wears the same black suit. Justified in that it's a standard design out of the MatterReplicator, and further lampshaded in a scene where one of the filthy assistants reveals that Spider only owns one set of clothes at a time, which he wears continually until it's too disgustingly unclean even for him, at which point he dials up a new one and has the old one burnt.

* MeaningfulEcho: Both presidents, paraphrasing [[FrostNixon Richard Nixon]]'s alleged words, say "If the president does it, it's not a crime." Only one of them then adds, "That's a joke, by the way."

** A billboard in ''Here To Go'' features a couple of faces who look an awful lot like [[{{Futurama}} Leela and Bender.]] Notably, the two share the setting of a future New York and depict it in a similarly parodic, exaggerated way, although Transmetropolitan came first.

** The gun Spider pulls on the phone and later Royce in the first issue ''is'' [[StarWars Han Solo]]'s blaster.

* ActionGirl: Channon, once she returns in series 2.

* AsleepForDays: Spider gets knocked out, comes to, and demands a machine so he can write a promised column, and is told he'd been out for four days.
** A drug addled variant: he'll often snort himself into a coma or otherwise rend him unable to work. One Filthy Assistant recounts the time Spider thought he was in a birdhouse in Switzerland for a week.

** The Smiler is somewhat based on TonyBlair, with elements of RichardNixon... and TheJoker.
*** And, jarringly, physically resembles Bobby Kennedy.

* FriendToAllChildren: See Pet the Dog, below
** Although Spider seems to see-saw on this a bit- he quite often expresses deepest loathing of children and delights in tormenting them.

* NoPartyGiven: Two political parties exist, but they're referred to by whether they're in office or not. (The Beast's party is referred to -- by Spider, mind you -- as the [[FunWithAcronyms Party In Government]].) It's still implied to be a Liberal vs. Conservative sort.
** Notably, despite the general adherence to the "Opposition party"/"Party in office" descriptors, Callahan is identified in his first appearance as "D-Cal." Of the two Opposition party candidates shown, Callahan's campaign shows traits of the modern Democratic party (such as hiring Vita as a showpiece for women's representation despite giving Schact more power), while Heller's campaign shows some aspects of the modern Republican party (with an exaggeration of said party's neoliberal economic ideals). Further obscuring the issue, Callahan and Heller's party is red on the election map, while the Beast's party is blue.

-->[[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming The little girl hugs him.]]

* TheSingularity: Not quite there yet, but damned close -- they have free energy due to solar plants on Mercury, nanotech assemblers, casual genetic engineering (up to and including a pill you can take that makes it so you genetically ''no longer need to do anything but breathe to be fed''), cybernetics (Spider gets a built-in cellphone later in the series), mind uploading (into immortal nanotech cloud bodies, natch), mental time travel, mind modifications, teleportation, intelligence augmenting drugs, human cloning, and the repair of ancient cryogenically frozen minds. But people are still people, and most of the futuretech is used for truly depraved entertainment -- a popular fast food is nanotech assembled ''human flesh'', for example, and a popular vacation for the middle class is to temporarily turn yourself into a HalfHumanHybrid (such as going swimming with the dolphins... as a human/dolphin hybrid).
** The existence of a reservation for "potential civilizations", which appears to have even more advanced technology than even the city has suggests either there are deliberate attempts to regulate/slow the singularity or the world is too [[CrapsackWorld crapsack]] to support an outright singularity outside of ideal conditions.
** It has been suggested on a few Singularity sites that the singularity did happen in Transmetropolitan, but anyone affected directly by it are [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence busy elsewhere]]. The geeks are gone, the rest of humanity -- well, life goes on.
** Spider invokes the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale Kardashev scale]] to point out that the world is ''far'' from Singularity level.

* StrawmanPolitical: Averted; there are only the "Ruling" and "Opposition" parties, and they aren't identified so much by policies as by their tendencies to play dirty and screw with the American populace. Makes sense since ''both'' of them are based on Nixon.
** The Smiler is visually more of a Reagan than a Nixon, if the campaign posters closely resembling Ronald Reagan's smiling face are any indication. However, the veneer that separates The Beast from Thatcher and The Smiler from Blair is very thin indeed. It helps that Ellis is British originally. But there are certainly elements of various elected leaders throughout history to both candidates.

** They're only missing the wireless optic nerve connection to let you take pictures with your mind.

* ThoseWackyNazis: Midget. Nazi. Gigolos.

* ACupAngst: Yelena. She claims that for her to fill out the kinds of dresses that look good on Channon she'd "need to be shot in the back by two cruise missiles" first. Which, given [[HotAmazon Channon's]] rather more spectacular figure, doesn't necessarily mean much. Still, Yelena seems to have a preference for wearing clothes that understate her figure: seemingly so as not to call attention to it.

* HotAmazon: Channon.

* {{Tsundere}}: [[spoiler:Yelena]], who noticeably helps Spider out routinely despite being adamant that she hates his guts, also subjects him to a hellride of an emotional rollercoaster love affair throughout the series: she has sex with him; denies that she had sex with him (he was too drunk to remember); when she finally admits it, she of course has to do it in a way that deliberately publicly insults him at his own party; she acts possessively over him when sensing rivals ([[spoiler:Vita]]) but still refuses to admit having feelings for him; and [[spoiler:they only end up together when she's one hundred per cent sure (or should we say ninety-nine per cent sure) that he's dying. And even then, nobody else are allowed to know that they're together]].

** [[spoiler: Mary and her camera.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Spider exposes the Smiler, who now widely hated and is spending vast amounts of money to stay out of prison (and may or may not run out), but he's caught an incurable disease that will kill him in a year.]]
** [[spoiler: [[YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle ONE PERCENT!]]]]

* LukeYouAreMyFather: subverted. A French revenge weapon with no head claims it's Spider's son.
-->'''Royce:''' All right, let me say now that with your history of drug abuse, it ''was conceivable'' that you could produce a child with no head...

* DoesntLikeGuns: Spider, for the majority of the comic. Bowel disruptors and snowball throwers are apparently fine; actual guns are not. He does [[BatmanGrabsAGun use a gun late in the series]], much to everyone's surprise, after a lot of death threats and a few assassins. [[spoiler: It turns out in the end to be misdirection; the BigBad is so worried about him having a gun that he only searches him for weapons, and Spider uses something else against him, something that he didn't bother to look for.]]
** It's not so much that he ''hates'' guns, he owns quite an impressive arsenal, he just prefers to humiliate people rather than kill them. For a couple issues in volume 3 he carries something that looks like a chrome desert eagle and Channon usually has a push-pistol and a sharpened expandable baton at minimum.

* ComicBookFantasyCasting: Spider Jerusalem resembles 19th-century abolitionist and suffragist William Lloyd Garrison, who also [[{{No Celebrities Were Harmed}} happened to be]] a bald outspoken journalist with glasses.

* DisposingOfABody: When Spider realizes that he's inspired The Smiler to murderous rage, he acquires {{Nanomachines}} designed to break human tissues and clothing down to monoatomic vapor, knowing he'll have to kill more than a few CIA assassins.

* ExtremeOmnivore: Damn near anything is eaten. Heck, there's an entire restaurant chain devoted to cannibalism. (And let us not forget the ''powdered children''. [[ShoutOut Powdered]] ''[[JonathanSwift Irish]]'' [[Literature/AModestProposal children.]]) Justified - pretty much everything can be cloned or replicated with the Makers without having to bother with killing creatures/people for their flesh and organs. Baby seal eyes for a light snack... yummy...

** Notably, despite the general adherence to the "Opposition party"/"Party in office" descriptors, Callahan is identified in his first appearance as "D-Cal." Of the two Opposition party candidates shown, Callahan's campaign shows traits of the modern Democratic party (such as hiring Vita as a showpiece for women's representation despite giving Schact more power), while Heller's campaign shows some aspects of the modern Republican party (with an exaggeration of said party's neoliberal economic ideals). Further obscuring the issue, Callahan and Heller's party is red on the election map, while the Beast's party is blue.

* RefugeInAudacity: Oh, boy. It starts out taking refuge in audacity; and very quickly progresses to building a holiday home there.

** Edward and Tubbs of ''{{The League of Gentlemen}}'' fame feature prominently in a couple of panels...just before Edward catches a bullet in the forehead.

** In issue 8, "Another Cold Morning", in the medley of scenes Mary beholds of the city, there is a woman with a chopper, and the exhaust on the chopper reads "Zed." In ''{{Pulp Fiction}}'', Zed, who is central to Butch Coolidge's story, has a chopper.

* TakeThat: As might be expected for an AuthorTract based on Hunter S. Thompson and making frequent references to ''Literature/AModestProposal'', pretty much every issue has this to some extent about topics ranging from shallow mass media, to political corruption, to religion as a means to oppress and abuse people rather than comfort them. The biggest, most ongoing TakeThat, though, is probably for the audience itself.

* TokenGoodTeammate: Vita for the Smiler's team.

** The smiley gaining a set of [[{{Watchmen}} clock hands]] near the end.

** One of Spider's panels in Issue 30 (when [[spoiler: Detective Newton has a gun to his head]] ) is an exact copy of [[spoiler: Rorschach's final "DO IT!!!" in Watchmen.]]

** Issue 6's first page references an [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Comicbook/Watchmen "intrinsic electric field"]]

* WorstNewsJudgmentEver: Enforced by the government under the Smiler, and if it's not the government, it's the private news media [[TrueArtIsOffensive being as offensive as possible]], though The Word, Robert [=McX=], and a few other news channels try their damndest to bypass government censorship.

* SubvertedKidsShow: Two of 'em in the setting. "Anthrax Cat" is TomAndJerry as a torture {{Gorn}} show, and "The Sex Puppets" is pretty Sesame Street puppets and people doing hardcore pornography.

** The President's speech (which is summarised for us by Spider) about his kids' dog is Nixon's Checkers speech TurnedUpToEleven, with added HighOctaneNightmareFuel.